


easy

by patrokla



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gen, Other, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 07:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16949658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: It takes Anne approximately two minutes into their next ‘let’s grab coffee, but don’t tell Dan’ meet-up to figure out that Venom is still around.





	easy

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a little thing i wrote up back in october after seeing the movie.

It takes Anne approximately two minutes into their next ‘let’s grab coffee, but don’t tell Dan’ meet-up to figure out that Venom is still around. To be fair, Eddie knew she was gonna figure it out - he’s still not too good at having conversations while Venom interjects (loudly) the whole time.  
  
She gets a little angry, but he thinks that she understands the whole thing, at least as much as anyone could.  
  
 _ **She thinks I’m good for you,**_ Venom tells him with barely-veiled smug satisfaction as they walk home. _**She’s right.**_  
  
“Is she?” Eddie asks. He’s teasing, mostly, but Venom’s still working on the subtleties of human emotion. (‘Working on’ might be a generous description).  
  
 _ **Yes! Save your life all the time, remind you to eat!**_  
  
“Yeah, uh, I’m pretty sure both of those situations are ones you get me into. Not that I don’t appreciate the healing and bullet-proofness.”  
  
 _ **I am also. Helping you get Anne back,**_ Venom says. Eddie shakes his head.  
  
“You know I never asked you to do that,” Eddie says. “She’s happy with Dan, and I’m not trying to get in the middle of their thing, you know?”  
  
 _ **If she is so ‘happy’ then why does she want to see you? Without Dan?**_  
  
That’s the million dollar question, right there, and Eddie doesn’t really want to answer it. So he deflects the best way he knows how.  
  
“What are we having for dinner?”  
  
——  
“So, Eddie. It must be nice doing some journalism again. Anne says you’ve got a story in the pipeline?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s uh. Top secret. Should be out pretty soon,” Eddie says awkwardly.  
  
He always feels a little awkward around Dan - all the rules say that they shouldn’t get along, but Eddie’s weirdly fine with Dan and Anne being together. Their names rhyme, for one thing. For another, they get along well for two people whose jobs keep them busy 120 hours a week. And Dan seems to genuinely like him, enough to try and help with Venom-  
  
 _ **Help? He tried to kill us!**_  
  
“He thought he was helping,” Eddie hisses, and Dan looks confused for half a second. Then he looks down at his plate, clearly trying to figure out how to be polite in a conversation with someone who’s talking to an invisible person.  
  
 _ **Would it help if I made myself**_ **more** _ **visible?**_ They’re in public, at an overpriced cafe that Dan had suggested, so Eddie doesn’t bother to answer the question, just rolls his eyes - then he remembers that, right, they're in public, and Dan is still there.  
  
“Hospital,” Eddie blurts, and Dan looks up at him in alarm.   
  
“Do you need to go there?”  
  
“No, sorry, I mean. How is it? Working there? How’s work?”  
  
That’s a thing people ask each other, right? How’s work?  
  
“It’s good, busy. Actually,” Dan says, warming to the subject, “we just got a new batch of interns, and one of them, Gary…”  
  
Eddie tries to pay attention to what Gary the Intern did, he really does, but he can feel Venom’s restlessness, their different discomforts with the situation feeding on each other. His foot starts to tap an irregular beat; his hand worries at the little organic sugar packet lying empty next to his coffee cup.  
  
“Hey Dan,” he says, then realizes he’s interrupted, “Sorry, I didn’t mean-“  
  
“It’s fine,” Dan says, “Is everything okay, Eddie?”  
  
“No, yeah, it’s all good,” Eddie says, “I just, I’ve got something I need to tell you. It’s about me and Anne,”  
  
“Oh?” Dan says, face going from affable to not-quite-pleasant blandness.  
  
“We’ve been hanging out a little bit, just catching up, you know, on the street,” Eddie says. Anne will be pissed, but he was never good at keeping this kind of secret.  
  
“Oh,” Dan says.  
  
“I’m not trying to get her back! I just thought, you know, maybe you’d want to know. Nothing’s happened, nothing’s happening, nothing’s gonna happen,” he rambles, and it takes a (comparatively) quiet _**Eddie**_ in his ear to get him to shut up.  
  
“Okay,” Dan says, and he doesn’t look happy, not really, but he doesn’t look too upset, either.  
  
“She was my best friend,” Eddie says. He doesn’t plan on it, but suddenly it’s out in the open, a tin can with a string attached to a cat who’s about to appear. “She was my best friend, and I miss that. I’d like to - to be friends again, and I want you to know that.”  
  
Dan softens back into affability. “I get it,” he says. “Thanks for telling me. I know she’s glad you’re doing - better. We both are.”  
  
Eddie feels a little whirl of satisfaction from Venom at ‘better’.  
  
“Thanks,” he says, getting out of his chair. “You’re a good guy, Dan.”  
  
Dan smiles a little, looks down at his coffee.   
  
“You too,” he replies, “Gotta get back to work?”  
  
“Something like that,” Eddie says. He grabs a couple more sugar packets from the box on the table, then heads out to get Venom some lunch.  
  
—  
  
 _ **Did you mean it?**_  
  
“Mean what,” Eddie murmurs.   
  
He doesn’t need to be, they’re at home, in bed, but somehow it’s easier to be quiet with Venom when no one else is around. Probably because whispering to yourself in public is even weirder than talking out loud.  
  
 _ **What you said to Dan, about Anne. You said nothing is going to happen.**_  
  
“Oh, that. Yeah, I meant it.”  
  
 _ **Why?**_  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
 _ **She made you happier than you were before, and after. Don’t you want that?**_  
  
“It’s not that simple,” Eddie says. “I don’t know how to explain it, but we’re just different people now, right? We wouldn’t fit together like we used to.”  
  
 _ **Oh.**_  
  
Venom settles down for awhile after that, and Eddie’s drifting to sleep when he feels a little tendril of the symbiote curl around his arm.  
  
 _ **That won’t happen to us,**_ Venom says.   
  
It’s not a question, but Eddie can feel a little unease in it.  
  
“No, it won’t,” he says softly. “Now go to bed, pal,”  
  
 _ **Pal,**_ Venom repeats derisively, but they both fall asleep quickly after that.


End file.
